


Go the Spoils

by montparnasse



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:10:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/pseuds/montparnasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bethany has questions—not that she’s going to ask, exactly.</p><p>Isabela has answers—not that she’s giving them up for free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go the Spoils

Isabela has always liked to think of herself (and she does so _like_ to think of herself) as a tightly wound bundle of contradictions with fantastic breasts and a pair of daggers that could either cut your balls off or make your skin tingle in places you never even knew you had, depending on her mood. She is an exercise in inconsistency, a glass-half-full of turbulence and tranquility, both parts greedy and giving, compassionate and vicious, a helper and a, a, um, a not-helper, so it’s really no surprise that when Bethany Hawke comes to her one soggy spring evening asking, “Which six,” Isabela knocks back one last mouthful of whiskey and settles in for a long night of education and personal indulgence the likes of which she hasn’t enjoyed since that one time in Denerim with the red-headed Chantry sister who was _nothing_ like a Chantry sister.

“Well, sweetness,” she says, leaning back, letting her eyes roam over all that smooth skin suffering unnecessarily in her clothes, “I suppose a demonstration is in order.”

And then, because she who hesitates is a fainthearted fool who’s never going to learn to mount the steering board, she’s out of her seat in a flash, catching Bethany’s wrist and drinking in the widening of her brown eyes like a really good cognac. “You see, sweetness, women are _different_ ,” she says, leaning in close and ignoring the stares she’s starting to draw from soldiers and sailors and assorted other seedy types. She’s never been against putting on a show, but she figures Bethany Hawke, with her pale voice and her pale skin and her skittish fingers may very well be. So, she tugs her away from the table and toward the stairs, smirking at the scandalized look on the definitely-an-apostate’s face when she pulls Bethany’s hand a little closer to her hip, and before her door is even in sight, Isabela is pinning her to the wall and, Andraste’s great heaving bosom, but Bethany Hawke is gorgeous, all bright eyes and full lips and that voice softer than a new blossom on a calla lily. Or something, anyway.

“Different, how?” she breathes, lifting one hand and then dropping it. Isabela can tell she’s never done this before.

“Oh, petal, women are patient. Men are like peacocks, strutting around with all their cards on display, always in a hurry to get there and get back and miss half the fun in the process. Men need _training_. They’re shooting stars without the novelty, they blow up like sudden sea storms and leave you stranded. Women, though,” she leans in again, lets her nose brush Bethany’s, her lips so, so tantalizingly close, “we’re real slow-burners. We’re the hundred-year storms, the rivers that rise up and drown everything out for miles. We build up like fires in the dry seasons and scorch the ground right through.” She kisses Bethany then, finally, just the slightest brush of lips, her mouth set in a thin line, and has an entirely inappropriate thought about a very certain blond Antivan elf and thinks herself a poet and a hypocrite in rapid succession.

“We burn,” she mutters, looking very much like she knows what that means, and why wouldn’t she.

“Mmm. Like hot coals.”

“Isabela,” Bethany is saying again, her eyes still half-shut and leaning forward in a way that says she definitely wants _more_ , “I—we’re in front of Varric’s room.” And so they are. And so he’s probably heard every word. (Dwarves have fantastic hearing, probably it is all the compensating for lack of other things. Or maybe it’s just him.)

“Right, and the last thing he needs is more fodder for his stories. Unless you’d like to give it to him, of course,” she laughs, pushing Bethany through her door and into her room, where there is still a very low fire burning in the grate and a sturdy, half-made, half-comfortable bed casting long shadows across the wall, and it’s truly never looked quite as good as it does right now.

Which brings her back to Bethany, who’s staring at her again, all wide-eyed innocence except there really is no such thing as innocence, that paper-thin invention of men that crumbles at the slightest touch, so she supposes it’s just typical performance anxiety, fear of the unknown, all that silly stuff making her go so cut-glass rigid at the foot of the bed, and that just won’t do.

“Turn around,” she says, and when Bethany does, she comes to stand behind her, runs her palms down her sides and feels the way she shivers, that telltale hitch of breath snagging in her throat when Isabela reaches around her front and unlaces the topmost tie of her tunic, cupping her breasts through the worn-out fabric before she moves on to the next one. This bodice just hinders them so terribly, and all Isabela can think are the things, the glorious, voluptuous, semi-indecent _things_ Bethany could do in a really good corset. It’s enough to make her dizzy, and the last thing she needs is a wound-up head to go with Bethany’s hammering heart and wobbly knees, so she focuses on the here-and-now and leaves the fantasizing for a later (hopefully a soon-ish sort of later) date.

Once she’s halfway down, she leans over Bethany’s shoulder, presses her nose to the side of her smooth neck. She smells like lavender, quivers like a leaf in a windstorm, jaw clenched tight. “Relax, sweet thing, or I’m going to have to stop our little lesson.”

“You’re going to laugh,” Bethany whisper-pouts, and if _that_ isn’t the cutest thing she’s seen in a fortnight.

“Sweetness, sex is hilarious. If you can laugh your way through it sometimes, you’re doing something right.”

She tilts her head back to meet Isabela’s eyes, flushed already and smiling, so slightly. “Really?”

“Really _really_. Of course, I still expect you to pay attention.” She squeezes her breast and gives her a little start, but Bethany doesn’t break eye contact and—and—oh, how is she supposed to resist that? She leans in and kisses her properly, no more of this chaste, tight-lipped rubbish; she takes advantage of Bethany’s little gasp in that underhanded way pirates are wont to do and slides her tongue inside, turning her around again to finish up on her bodice, only pulling away to help Bethany get the whole thing over her head. She can tell Bethany has never done _this_ before either, never kissed or been kissed like this, and she’s just starting to get the hang of the thing when Isabela drags her fingers down her belly to feel all that soft, smooth skin under her hands, and then? Then, Bethany arches right into her, gripping at her armguards, gasping again when Isabela sucks her lower lip between her teeth. This time it’s even sweeter.

“Remember those books I lent you? The one about the Antivan whore who seduced her way up the ranks of the brothel?” She hooks her fingers around Bethany’s trousers, pulling them down her hips and walking them backwards toward the bed all at once. “I don’t suppose you’ve had time to read it?”

“No, I did,” she says, her hands so soft, so charmingly _tentative_ on Isabela’s waist. “It was funny. And—well, _good_. But funny.”

“See, then? Funny is good.” Bethany’s underclothes are off in one swift, practiced motion, and she sits on the bed, smiling slightly, shifting awkwardly in the firelight, clearly fighting the urge to cover herself, which would be a tragedy tantamount to covering that one nude statue of Andraste in Val Royeaux. Isabela loves that statue; it’s the best thing about Orlais, other than the women, of course. “Don’t, sweetness. Let me see you.”

She doesn’t, but her eyes do dart around the room, the floor, the ceiling, the frayed edge of the quilt like tiny little moths seeking the light, anywhere but Isabela, except when she reaches up and starts unlacing her bodice. That one gets her attention. That one _always_ gets their attention, and it affords Isabela a little more time to rake her eyes over Bethany’s bare body, her long legs shut tight at the knees, her hair falling over her tense shoulders, wide hips, her skin painted practically gold in the dim, dusty light of her sort-of-but-not-really decent room.

“I told you,” she says, low, letting it hang loose around her body while she works on her armguards and boots instead, “women are patient.”

Bethany bites her lip. “I can be patient,” she says like a promise, like Isabela needs a promise from her, this little bit of a thing who is sweeter than the summer sun and twice as bright. “But—I just—please,” she finishes, tucking her hands into her very naked lap.

“Please, what?”

“Let me,” she says, rough around the edges, and she’s reaching for Isabela, her fingers playing at the bottom of her bodice until Isabela nods and lets her peel it off, and Bethany—bless her—follows it up proper, just like a woman should, pulling her underwear down her thighs and letting her hands linger behind her knees, sending a nice little thrill tingling up her spine and back down again.

Yes. Women learn so _fast_.

“The thing is,” she says, untying her scarf and fluffing her hair with her fingers, “everyone’s a little different. You just have to figure out exactly how to drop their anchor,” and with that, she straddles Bethany’s hips and pushes her back against the pillows, leaning down to press her mouth to her neck and smiling against her skin when Bethany tilts her head to encourage more teeth, whimpering when she sucks at the hollow of her throat, tasting the salty-sweet tang of her skin.

“Like that, do you,” Isabela breathes, nipping at her jaw.

“I do like that.” Bethany’s fingers are in her hair and she’s still tense, still wide-eyed and straddling the borders of desire and uncertainty but so determined, so set in the eyes and jaw, that taut-as-a-bowstring look of a woman who doesn’t know what she wants but knows she’s going to find out, going to take it and call it her own. It’s so easy to get lost in Hawke’s ocean, just let yourself ebb and flow and keep all your cards open for when Marian Hawke comes calling, but here is Bethany, here is her pastel-porcelain, china-doll-breakable baby sister growing up between the cracks and into the sun, mapping out the world all on her own. It’s enough to give Isabela a moment of pause. It’s enough to make Bethany—every lion its thirst, after all—surge up against her, hands on her shoulders, enough to make her say, “Maker, please, _please_ don’t stop,” sure as she’s ever been, and if _that_ isn’t enough to get a girl all a-tingle.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, sweet thing.” Then she’s back at it, her mouth on Bethany’s neck for a few fantastic moments until she pulls away again, sitting up and grinning her favorite I’m-Awful-And-I-Know-It grin down at her, saying, “What about it, then? Ready to explore some uncharted territory?”

Bethany laughs and laughs, probably more out of nervousness and sudden exposure than anything else, and her whole body moves with the sound, her stomach puckering up, her breasts and shoulders quivering underneath Isabela’s hands. “That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard.”

“Mmm, I need to lend you some more tawdry Antivan romances,” she chuckles, dragging her knuckles down Bethany’s ribs and leaning down to tug her ear between her teeth, catching the small, high whimper when she drags them back up again. “Or maybe you just need to take a few more tumbles with me. I’ve got a few that’ll peel the tattoos off an Antivan Crow.”

Another whimper, and—right, then. Lesson Number One.

“Sometimes, it’s the smallest things,” she says, pushing Bethany’s knees apart and slipping a thigh up between her legs, flexing, rubbing gently while Bethany sucks in a shivery breath and clutches the sheets. “And you take them, and you remember.”

That’s when she runs her hands up Bethany’s stomach, all along her sides and arms, her full breasts and shoulders, watching the way it makes her shiver, the way she bites her lip and shifts when Isabela’s fingers drag back down to clasp her hips, wrapped up in all their rings. She’s always liked to keep her jewelry on for these things, and unless she’s very mistaken (and who cares if she is?), Bethany likes it. A lot. It does make her look pretty fantastic, after all.

“No one knows the music of the body like a woman, you’ll see. You search these things out, and you make them sing.”

“Show me how,” Bethany whispers thickly, moving her hips, pushing up against Isabela’s thigh, her breathing coming quicker, her voice coming braver.

“Oh, sweetness,” she says, her voice a low, rolling rumble in her throat, suddenly feeling equal parts hedonistic and herself a student, and when did that even happen? “You’ve only to ask.”

“I’m asking,” Bethany gasps, and that sound, that _sound_ , Maker’s cursed balls, she is going to drag that sound out of her again.

“Ask me again,” she says, grinding her knee hard against her, making her hiss.

“Please, _please_ ,” Bethany arches her hips higher, head tipped back against the pillow, and the sight of it is enough to send Isabela’s pulse into a mad dash of hard-hammering _want_ , that familiar jolt of anticipation blooming in her blood. “I’ll do anything.”

The grin is out of control, overflowing off her face. “Ooh, sweet thing. Something you should know,” and she pulls her knee back and replaces it with her hand, trailing the heel of her palm lightly along before she parts her and slides a finger inside, warm and wet and open for her. “Don’t ever say that to someone like me.”

Bethany gasps, tenses, shivers and finally, finally relaxes, eyes flying wide open when Isabela crooks her finger just _so_. “What—what sort of _someone_ is that?”

“A thief. A liar. A cheat, a crook, a two-timing, double-dealing rogue with the best ass in the Free Marches. The _worst_ sort of woman to keep your secrets or your gold.”

“Going to make off with my heart?” Bethany rolls her hips into her hand, smiling a very pretty, very lopsided smile so pleased, so infectious it makes Isabela growl. “You’ve only to _ask_.”

Well. Here is Bethany Hawke, writhing underneath her with that crooked mouth, giving her cheek, and Isabela is positively florid with desire, which is hardly a novel state in this sort of situation, but still. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it, sweetness,” she says, leaning over her, sucking a nipple into her mouth and sliding her finger out and up, up, and the resulting high, wild gasp when she finds Bethany’s clit is like poetry, like the bells at the fishermen’s wharf, the rise and fall of her chest almost, almost as good as the rhythm of the sea, the tide between her toes. “I’d sell it for a new necklace. I’d toss it to the sharks.”

“You’re such a liar,” Bethany groans, so soft, so _courtly_ , even when Isabela dips her tongue into her navel, laughing against her there because, yes. She is an accomplished liar, and Bethany Hawke can saw through bullshit like crinkled-up Orlesian tissue paper, and don’t they just make a pair, the two of them, the dagger-wielding, unrepentant thief and the woman who may very well pull out her heart if Isabela asked her to, who would trust her not to let her bleed out on the floor even though she ought not. (Even though Isabela never would. Even though she got rid of her own heart years ago, traitorous thing, sold half to the stars for good fortune and half to the sea, only home she’s ever known. Even though it frightens her, and nothing ever frightens her, not ever. Even though she really would rather have a new necklace.)

“That, I am,” she says, shifting, and she tries not to let that feel like dishonesty, too, but Bethany probably already knows. She sees _everything_ , even the things you’d rather she not, and it’s a little uncomfortable. It’s also a little arousing. “But you ought to keep it. A woman doesn’t just give her heart away, sweetness. You need the thing.” And she replaces her fingers with her tongue, seeking her out, laughing at the shocked cry that Bethany can’t muffle, the tip of her tongue slipping inside and then over her clit in slow, lazy patterns, driving her hips into a quick rhythm of her own.

“I told you,” she says, watching Bethany’s neck contort into a really interesting angle when she sucks at her clit, “we’re the autumn fires. Tense as fishing wire, and then we break.” She flicks her tongue out faster, massaging the place where Bethany’s arse meets her thigh and pushing her finger in again, twists it up and around and if Bethany didn’t have her fist stuffed in her mouth right now Isabela is sure she’d be _howling_.

“Sweetness, that’s hardly fair. Let me hear you,” she says, flicking her tongue out for emphasis, and Bethany does, tangling her fingers in Isabela’s hair instead and letting every little sound out while Isabela laps her up, pulls the pleasure out of her.

“I can’t— _oh_ —I can’t—”

Isabela never gets to find out just what she _can’t_ , because all it takes is one more stroke of the tip of her tongue and Bethany breaks like a hurricane, toes curling, fingers tightening in her hair, some manner of raw-voiced babble bubbling out of her mouth as Isabela strokes her long and slow all the way through, her mouth pressed to the seizing muscles of her belly.

She can’t help the low laughter that hums out when she comes back up to admire her work, Bethany spread out all wobbly-limbed and breathless, flushed and messy and so, so beautiful, sweat in her hair and her hair in her face, her breasts rising and falling while she tries to catch her breath. Isabela has made such an utter _mess_ of her, wind-swept, ruddy-faced, ravaged by the waves. It’s perfect. She leans down and presses a kiss between her breasts, tastes the sweat there and skates one hand up her side, coming to rest at her waist.

“Well, sweetness,” she says, honey-smooth, summer-sweet, “do you feel _educated_?”

Apparently, Bethany isn’t done surprising her tonight, because she grabs Isabela’s hand and turns them over so she’s on top, her eyes bright and wild and really, ridiculously gorgeous when she leans down to kiss her. “In fact, I do,” she agrees, and Isabela can’t help getting a little handsy again because there’s all this wide-eyed, messy mage pressing down on top of her and those thighs just fit her hands like gloves. Or maybe her hands fit Bethany’s thighs like gloves. She doesn’t know. “I think you forgot a few things, though.”

“Oh?” Bethany seems so _sure_ again, all sharp-eyed Hawke-ish conviction, trailing her hands across her shoulders and cupping her breasts with that adroit elegance Isabela has always associated with mages, the long fingers, the deceptively delicate wrists. She meets her eyes and keeps them, lets Bethany drag her nails down her stomach and feels the quickening of her pulse, the familiar tension pooling low in her belly. “We can’t have that.”

“A woman gives as good as she gets,” Bethany whispers, wiser than her years, and she doesn’t look away when she lowers her head, searching her out, mimicking Isabela’s movements as best she can until she finds her own tempo, sending a spiral of pleasure up her belly and crashing all the way down to her toes.

“And we’re both—we’re _such_ givers,” she gasps, pushing Bethany’s hair out of her face and noticing that the nervous tension is straining her shoulders again, not quite washed out, and she’s about to tell her she’s doing a real bang-up job when there is a—

“ _Oh_ —Andraste’s blazing arse—that’s so—”

“I’m sorry! I’ll stop, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Bethany pulls away but Isabela is quicker because she’s quicker than everyone, one hand on her shoulder to push her back down.

“Put that hand right back where it was,” she growls, and when Bethany does, it’s like fire and ice and sweetness all at once, better than that one lightning trick, better than really good rum, better than— _almost_ better than sailing, and the thrill of it pulses through her with each thrust and twist of Bethany’s fingers until her whole body is just buzzing with it. It’s amazing. _Bethany_ is amazing, and when she drags her tongue over Isabela’s clit she’s just _gone_ , lost, all topsy-turvy inside-out, her hips arching into Bethany’s mouth, heat and pleasure and scorching through her while all the colors bleed together, every bit of tension inside her frayed at the edges and burned to a well-done crisp.

By the time she catches her breath again, Bethany is moving to lie alongside her, pushing her face into the crook of Isabela’s neck; she squirms a little when she feels her arm stretching out around her. This is about the time she would normally clean herself up and pull her underwear back on, be on her way or kick her sudden not-quite lover out of bed, drown out their protests and maybe relieve a merchant of some coin on her way to bed, but here is Bethany Hawke, here is laughter muffled against her shoulder, here is a hand running through her damp hair, and—and—shit.

In theory, Captain Isabela is a liar, a cheat, a thief, the Scourge of the Seas, the bane of too many tavern floors and an all-around underhanded siren sadly shipwrecked on the shore. A regular _scoundrel_ , with a soul of plated gold.

In practice—well, in practice she is all of those things, because who do you think you’re dealing with, here? But, see, in _practice_ , she’s breathless, restless, wanting, her bones like blackberry jam and Bethany Hawke’s head pillowed on her shoulder, their bodies pressed together like this is something _real,_ warm and exhausted and so blessedly content. In practice, Isabela grew another heart, and it roars louder than a lion. In practice, she isn’t making a move to get up from her scratchy, mussed-up bed.

So.

_So._

Isabela can’t help it; she wraps an arm around Bethany, pulls her a little closer just because she can. Just because Bethany is looking at her with those big, bright eyes and Isabela really wants to kiss her again. “Well, sweetness,” she says, scrubbing a hand over her face and trying not to look so thoroughly fucked, “ _I’m_ certainly feeling educated. Stunned. Aghast. I’m all a-flutter, see what you’ve done?”

“Women know what we like,” Bethany says. Her hair is falling in her face and Isabela decides she loves that look, tangled, _messy_ , disheveled in that way only a good tumble will do. “Going to kick me out?”

She’s not convinced it wouldn’t be the wise thing to do, but, well. Being wise is never much fun anyway, and she’s so comfortable right now. “Not unless you want me to, sweetness.” She tugs Bethany’s earlobe between her teeth and feels her relax, all the tension bled out. “Just don’t get any ideas. Unless they’re filthy, illegal, or it’s going to get us a whole bunch of gold.”

“No shortage of those,” she laughs. “The filthy ones, I mean. I need practice.”

Isabela folds her into her arms, breathes her in. She smells like sweat and lavender and she’s so soft, so _strong_ , this pretty, glittering thing Isabela can’t even find it in her to corrupt. “You’ll make a fine wanton,” she says, brushing her hair back. “You’ll sail away with me and we’ll strut through the streets of Antiva City, Crows trailing in our wake, drink the best brandy, duel on the seashore, change our course with the tides. Oh, sweetness, you’d look amazing in blue, has anyone ever told you? Blue and gold and maybe a little silver. I’ll even give you a tattoo, right about—mmm, yes, right there.” She brushes Bethany’s hip, just above the bone.

“You’d need a ship for all that.”

“I’ll have my ship. I’ll have you again, too, just you wait.”

Bethany laughs and Isabela bites the junction of her neck and shoulder, watches her smile and close her eyes. She is going to do this. She is really going to fall asleep curled into Bethany Hawke like a, like a besotted milkmaid. “You don’t have to wait.”

“Oh? Right now? Really?”

“No, no! Maker, I might _die_.”

“We’ll work up to it,” she promises, kisses the corner of her mouth and she actually means it. She does.

When the first light of the weak Kirkwall sun tears through her flimsy brown curtains in the morning, Isabela squints into it and finds an arm tossed loose over her waist, Bethany still folded into her and very much asleep, which really shouldn’t surprise her but it does. The night before felt so much like being drunk that she half-expects a headache that never comes, and by the time Bethany wakes up, smiling that sweet, sun-soaked thing, she’s already rehearsed her excuses, run through her That-Was-Good-But routine, ready to cut and run before Bethany even turns over because Isabela is always ready to cut and run, hold it at arm’s length with one hand on the dagger at her back, no sudden moves, no honey-sick delusions.

And Bethany stabs that right through when she kisses her shoulder, when she shifts a little closer and says, “Morning suits you.”

She has no idea what to do with that. She has no idea what to do with any of this, the fingers threaded through hers, the light streaming in through the dirty window, so she takes the easy way around and pins Bethany to the bed, kisses her hard like she knows what she’s doing, like her heart isn’t pounding out of time in her chest. It’s as good an answer as any.

“Nice day for it, sweetness,” she says, and Bethany’s smile could melt the gold right off her.

So she’s making it up as she goes, but it’s not like anyone has to know. Isabela always lands on her feet, after all.

And even when she doesn’t, she looks _fantastic_ dusting herself off.


End file.
